Thread by @DouthatNYT

Let me briefly defend @ezraklein's claims about the centrality of polarization to America's problems against @ezraklein's argument that the "dearth of the democracy" is really America's biggest challenge.
vox.com/21561011/2020-…

I'm sympathetic to the idea that the G.O.P. would be a better political formation if it were forced to compete more outside its rural/exurban base, which is one reason among many I don't particularly fear the abolition of the filibuster or the addition of new states. But ...

... one thing that 2020 should make clear is that the G.O.P., while not a majority coalition, is a *highly* competitive one relative to minority coalitions in the US past. It isn't staring down the barrel of demographic collapse. It's always within hailing distance of 50 percent.

Look at House popular vote share, one possible proxy for what a parliamentary system might look like. In the last ten years we've had one Democratic wave election: D+8 in 2018. The other margins: R+1 in 2016, R + 6 in 2014, D +1 in 2012, R +7 in 2010. 2020 is D+2 right now.

So if we ditched the electoral college and the Senate and just governed the whole country through the House, we would get ... extremely tight margins with maybe a tiny D advantage in high turnout elections, and constant power switches.

At the presidential level Ds do have a popular advantage. But if you start the current era with Bush v. Gore, their average popular vote advantage is +2.5. If you compare that the average presidential margin in any 20th century period, that's small bordering on infinitesimal.

This suggests to me that the GOP's countermajoritarian advantages are, indeed, preventing it from having to make certain moderating adaptations -- but those missing adaptations are the policy/rhetoric equivalent of a 2% shift in public opinion, not some dramatic leftward move.

Which suggests, in turn, that what's gridlocking American government above all at the moment is the fact that *both* coalitions are stuck around 50 percent - Dems maybe just above, Rs just below - not that the Ds have a big popular mandate that's being unfairly blunted.

Note that we we tested this in 2020 by achieving incredibly high turnout, and got -- the same basic kind of highly polarized, small-D-margin popular-vote result for both the presidency and the House.

So, long and short, I think breaking out of polarization would transform American politics far more than just bringing House/presidential results perfectly in line with popular vote totals. Now go buy Ezra's book.